‘I am not driving back home in a car with Bipolar Man,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘Seriously. I’ve got weapons.’

She hadn’t let go of my hands, after the rush subsided, and I thought that was a good sign. I tried to think what I was going to do if she tried to pull away and sit back. Let her go, I guessed, even though my instinct was to try to hold on.

But she didn’t pull back this time.

‘You screwed up,’ she told me. ‘I can’t believe you stalked me like this.’

‘If I’d been stalking you, I’d have been bumming cigarettes from Derrick across the street,’ I pointed out. ‘I was working independently in the same town, not calling and not talking to you. If you want to call that stalking, I have to ask for an on-the-field review of the play by the ref.’

‘Too bad for you that relationships don’t have referees.’

‘You’re right, that does suck. I could use a slow-motion replay right now.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ Claire said, and I went cold inside, and very still. Here it was, the moment I’d been trying so hard to avoid thinking about, when Claire wised up, realised that I wasn’t the smart guy with prospects she needed to be with … but then she smiled, just a little, and the ice freezing my lungs and heart started to thaw a little. ‘You’re an idiot, but I know why you came. You’re conditioned to think that everything is a threat, and you were afraid that I was going to be in trouble here on my own. You were trying to save me. But Shane, I don’t always need saving. Understand?’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘You’ve saved me plenty of times. I got the point. But nobody from Morganville ought to be out there alone. It isn’t safe, and you know it.’

‘Nothing’s safe,’ Claire told me then, with the conviction of someone a lot older. ‘Nobody’s ever safe. But that doesn’t mean you don’t respect what I want, Shane.’

‘I’m sorry I let you down,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t stay there while you were here. Not without making sure you’d be okay. Like you said, Morganville conditioning. If you want me to go, I’ll go. Just tell me. Right now.’

I’d startled her, and worried her, and forced her to stop analysing, and she blinked slowly and said, ‘I don’t want you to go. I missed you, Shane. I missed you so much.’